Not to be confused with the 1960 film of the same name, Bertrand Bonello‘s short film Where The Boys Are (2010, 22 mins.) features four girls sitting around in a Parisian apartment dreaming of boys while, across the street, a group of Arab and African men are putting the finishing touches to the Gennevilliers mosque.
As it opens one of the girls, Pauline (Pauline Etienne), is translating the lyrics of the eponymous song by Connie Francis for her friends and they look on dreamily, no doubt imagining the man they will one day meet (“a smilin’ face, a warm embrace, two arms to hold me tenderly”). Having the mosque with its many men at work acts as a physical realisation of where the boys are. However, if the distance to these men is easily spannable, the distance presented is more abstract. Religion, race, or maybe something else — Bonello is deliberately opaque.
In one scene the screen is quartered, each quadrant showing one of the girls at home, bored and restless (“Till he holds me I’ll wait impatiently”). They listen to music, send dull text messages to each other, or browse photos on their social networks. The implied impatience is the girls’ waiting to mature from their current fantasies. However, what they don’t see in their naïvete is that the adult world, as portrayed by the workers, is just as humdrum.
During a party, where too much alcohol is drunk, the Francis song plays once more, as the girls pair off and dance arm in arm they appear vulnerable and in need of reassurance. In the background the mosque can be seen, its minaret reaching into the air — a subtle phallic symbol, perhaps. It’s debatable given the girls’ actions whether it’s a symbol of longing for their imaginary boys or one of rejection as they find solace in each other. As the film follows the song, it perhaps exploits an ambiguity in the lyrics. For all the song’s mention of a mythical he, it notes only that “someone waits for me”.
Alan Smiffey 